CITIES FIGHTING HERITAGE VANDALISM

The City of Stirling is getting serious about heritage protection with introducing a law that will prevent the so called heritage by neglect where owners of buildings will allow them to fall into disrepair and then claim they can’t be saved and need to be demolished. The new law will allow officers to enter neglected heritage buildings and order repairs for which the owners will have to pay the cost.

I believe the City of Fremantle has been looking at something similar and I hope they will follow Stirling. My preference would be to extend the law also to non-heritage buildings, so the City could force owners to look after badly cared for buildings better. There are some disgraceful examples of owners not giving a damn about our community and streetscapes, and we should not have to put up with that. Demolition by neglect is blackmail, so let’s make it…